A Successful Retailer Offers Insights
Sonja Hubbard, CEO, E-Z Mart Stores, Inc., presenting the opening keynote address, said she welcomes the advantages offered by InfoMetrics and said it will help her company accelerate its growth by providing valuable information on which it can make smart decisions.
“Already, our grocery wholesaler has worked to create multiple order guides that are site specific,” she said. “Our future is turning these challenges into opportunities.”
She outlined her company’s story, which began in the 1960s when her father, Jim Yates, opened a 7-Eleven and it became a true family operation.
“I was in first or second grade and I’d walk from school to the store where my mother was pulling the afternoon shift,” she recalled. With her younger sister, Stacy, now the company’s CFO, she would read comic books, drink Icees, and watch customers. “This business got in our blood,” she said.
Then in 1970, Jim Yates founded E-Z Mart Stores, first drawing the company’s logo with the kids’ crayons on the kitchen table. Today, E-Z Mart, based in Texas, operates 308 stores over a five-state area.
“Our focus has been on “dancing with the one that brung you,” as my dad always said,” Hubbard told her audience. “In other words, instead of buying new assets and ignoring the old, we have invested significant cash flow into core operational upgrades. We have updated virtually all fueling equipment, enhanced lighting, changed and added foodservice programs, enlarged and upgraded restrooms, improved graphics and updated our image.”
In addition, E-Z Mart is adjusting interior and exterior design, the store layout, customizing individual stores’ merchandising, and planning for more economical and environmental efficiency, she said. “Most importantly, we’re designing to better serve more customers.”
Hubbard outlined some of the steps the company has taken to grow, including increased offerings in foodservice.
“Foodservice operations can provide great revenue and profits. They can save a poor store, convert mediocre into great, but it can also drag a store down,” she cautioned. “All programs don’t work in all stores or for all companies.”
But while foodservice is a challenge, Hubbard said “It is an exponential opportunity for us together. We need unique, quality products developed to serve customers on the go.”
Working with the company’s distributor, GSC Enterprises, Inc., Sulphur Springs, TX, E-Z Mart has made significant strides in the difficult tobacco category, Hubbard said.
“We started using the GSC Compliance Assistance Program for smokeless tobacco category products in October, and we’re pleased with the results,” she explained. “We have reduced our out-of-stock position within every SKU targeted. Our sales are reflective of this too.”
Hubbard said this year’s cigarette volume is up 6.8% compared to a 4.3% decline within the industry, and its Smokeless/OTP category is up 15.1% in volume compared to the industry’s 9.5%. “It is obvious that being in stock sells,” she said, crediting manufacturers with helping to achieve that.
Industry cooperation, in fact, was a major theme of Hubbard’s presentation, as she encouraged distributors, suppliers and retailers to work together on difficult issues, including government affairs, for the good of the industry.
“We need to work as one,” she declared, “collaborate and be one voice. Together we must work for our future.”
